Projected experiences of a Hallmark Sport Event on social media and its contributions to Destination Image : Case study of visitors’ projections on Instagram while attending Svenska Skidspelen 2022 in Falun, Sweden

Sammanfattning: Sport events are known to be strategically utilized to ‘sell’ the identity of its host destination. This since projections of and from the sport event can indirectly reflect elements symbolizing the destination, generating an image transfer process. And oppositely, how visitors project their lived experiences of a sport event on social media, may also have an impact on the destination image. But in research, the issue of branding outcomes from sport events has predominantly been studied from a managerial perspective and was mainly conducted 15 years ago. Since then, digital revolutions have entered the global arena and offered innovative ways to share and create the stories of our lives; causing a change in our perspectives of how we interpret experiences of the world. In the context of sport tourism, existing knowledge on the field would benefit to gain new insights following these new circumstances. And given these circumstances, there is not only a theoretical need but also an implicational need to understand visitors’ subjective experiences when attending a hallmark event and how such are being projected to the world through social media. Answers may provide new, strategical opportunities for practitioners to coordinate their branding activities to align with values that visitors places into their experiences of sport events – which in long-term lead to favorable, shared destination images. This study provides a glimpse of this perspective, by approaching a contemporary case study of the hallmark sport event Svenska Skidspelen 2022 in Falun, Sweden. Focus lies to examine visitors’ subjective experiences judged by their uploaded content on Instagram. A thematic analysis combined with online interviews of users bring light to prominent themes arising from the content; ranging from emotional to spatial experiences of the sport event and the destination of Falun. Moreover, new light is brought upon the previous studied effects of sport event leverages. Results reveal how ‘liminal’ sensations of experiencing the ‘folkfest’ contribute greatly to the overall experience and affect how visitors projects their sense of place on Instagram. This study is to the author’s note being the first one during the last decade seeing these results.